Another physician took the house, and within a few months came near dying of erysipelas.

He deserved it.

The house, meanwhile, received no treatment; the doctors, according to their usual wont, even in their own families, were satisfied to deal with the consequences, and leave the causes to do their worst.
"Next after the doctors, a school-teacher took the house, and made a few changes, for convenience apparently, for substantially it remained the same; for he, too, escaped as by the skin of his teeth.

Finally, after the foreclosure of many lives, the sickness and fatality of the property became so marked, that it became unsalable.

When at last sold, every sort of prediction was made as to the risk of occupancy; but, by a thorough attention to sanitary conditions, no such risks have been encountered." These deaths were suicides,--ignorant ones, it is true, not one stopping to think what causes lay at the bottom of such "mysterious dispensations." But, just as surely as corn gives a crop from the seed sown, so surely typhoid fever and diphtheria follow bad drainage or the drinking of impure water.
Boiling such water destroys the germs of disease; but neither boiled water nor boiled germs are pleasant drinking.
If means are too narrow to admit of the expense attendant upon making a drain long enough and tight enough to carry off all refuse water to a safe distance from the house, then adopt another plan.